Meet The Epprechts, The Swiss-American Family With A $2 Billion Cheese Fortune

Great Lakes Cheese, with its HQ in sleepy Hiram, Ohio, has a secretive billionaire family running the show. PRNewsFoto/Great Lakes Cheese Company

Take a 45-minute southeastern drive from Cleveland, Ohio, and you'll find the quiet village of Hiram, population 1,406. Something of an inconsequential place, its best claim to fame is that the 20th president of the United States, James A. Garfield, went to school there. Fitting then, that the quiet town is the home of a silent behemoth of a company, Great Lakes Cheese.

A classic American story: having immigrated to Cleveland from Switzerland in 1948, Hans Epprecht earned his citizenship and served in the US Army during the Korean War. After his service, he began work at Brewster Cheese in Ohio. In 1958, he left to start his own company. He borrowed $5,000 on a life insurance policy and began delivering cheese to local stores and bodegas on Cleveland's east side. He first delved into actual cheesemaking in 1984, when he purchased the company's first manufacturing plant in Adams, New York.

Throughout the decades, with the help of his children, John and Kurt Epprecht and Heidi Eller, he transformed what was an Ohio-based enterprise into a national player, supplying cheese to retailers and the food service industry. It has plants in Ohio, New York, Wisconsin and Utah. McDonald's is among Great Lakes' customers.

Great Lakes Cheese boasts annual revenues of $2.3 billion, Eller confirms. Employees, of which there are approximately 2,200, own roughly 20% of the company. The remainder is owned by the Epprecht family. Based on a price-to-sales ratio of comparable company Saputo (owned by Canadian billionaire Emanuele "Lino" Saputo), conservatively discounted for Great Lakes' opacity, the company is worth roughly $2.6 billion, meaning that the Epprecht family lays claim cheese fortune worth just over $2 billion.

The Epprechts are extremely private. Eller took over for Hans as chairman of the company two years ago. John and Kurt Epprecht serve as vice-presidents, Eller said. Hans, now 82, no longer has ownership of the company, Eller said. She provided no further comment on the company's ownership -- leaving to question how exactly the fortune is divided between Hans' children. However, a page in John Epprecht's name on LinkedIn lists him as "owner" of the company, suggesting that the business is split among the siblings.